The Atlantic Coast Conference had not played a game as currently configured when ACC commissioner John Swofford issued that particular proclamation at ACC’s Operation Basketball, the league’s cool nickname for “media day.” That very well may be an accurate representation of the league’s past, and that still may be its future, once Louisville enters and some of the longstanding members rebuild their programs.

However, those who declared the ACC already was there, right now, this season, were ignoring that a league is not composed of its best two or three or four or five members. It is, in the case of the ACC, composed of 15 schools. At least one of those is a serious national championship contender this season. One or two more have serious Final Four ambitions. Some are in the process of reconstructing toward success. Some appear to be in total disrepair.

This isn’t the best league in college basketball history. It’s not even the best league this season. There are far too many holes in the resume.

What’s hard to figure is why anyone thought it would get there so fast.

To its credit, the ACC was the only league that expanded with basketball foremost in mind. It didn’t expand to get better at basketball; it expanded to renegotiate its TV contract, just like the SEC. But the ACC was the only league that set about trying to find elite basketball programs to add. It started with Syracuse and Pitt, then added Louisville once Maryland decided to exit for the Big Ten.

A year ago, however, out of 12 teams, the ACC placed only four in the NCAA Tournament field. Only Duke made it as far as the Elite Eight. Add in Syracuse, Pitt and Notre Dame, and it’s seven of 15, with two of those exiting after one game and SU reaching the Final Four. All in all, it was not anything close to what the Big East achieved in 2011, or even the ACC in several previous iterations.

It wasn’t as though there was some great influx of talent on the way to invigorate the programs that recently have been struggling. Only Duke ranked in Scout.com’s top 10 recruiting classes, with Syracuse, N.C. State, North Carolina and Notre Dame in the top 20.

There is only one projected 2014 lottery pick in the ACC according to DraftExpress.com. Kansas has three itself. There are eight players on the Wooden Award preseason watch list. The Big Ten has 10 and the Big 12, with five fewer members than the ACC, has six.

The best news for the ACC is that it stands where the Big Ten did for many seasons during the previous decade: with a chance to make a statement and to turn around its disappointing early performance numbers by excelling in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Over the past nine seasons, eight of the series ended with one conference winning more games — last year was a draw — and seven times the winning side earned more NCAA Tournament bids that season.

The annual event begins Tuesday Dec. 3 and concludes the following night. Some curious matchmaking has presented an excellent opportunity for the ACC to win the majority of the games, perhaps even to dominate the 12-game series.

According to the ACC’s official preseason order and the preseason Big Ten poll conducted by The Columbus Dispatch, the Challenge matches seven teams that are in identical positions or one spot removed: 9th-place Florida State at 9 Minnesota, 5 Notre Dame at 5 Iowa, 2 Michigan at 1 Duke, 4 Wisconsin at 4 Virginia, 10 Northwestern at 10 NC State, 8 Boston College at 7 Purdue and 12 Miami at 12 Nebraska.

There are four glaring disparities, two of which put the ACC on the green with what would appear to be makeable putts, and one that gives a low-ranked ACC team a winnable home game: 6 Indiana at 2 Syracuse, 11 Penn State at 6 Pitt and 8 Illinois at Georgia Tech.

Winning those games could provide the ACC an edge in the series, and a needed spark to reassert its prominence among college basketball conferences.

There might not be any more “best conference ever” talk this season, not with USC Upstate on the wrong side of the ledger. But there’s hope.